For businesses large and small, relying on a cloud-based collaboration and productivity suite such as Microsoft Office 365 is becoming the norm. Enhancing productivity in your organisation is vital to get ahead in 2017 - and using Office 365 can help, if it's used right...

Letter to the industry

How are you feeling, dear? Because we heard you're not very well. Although there have been peaks and troughs in your share price, it has been in decline for the last five years, and is now hovering around $2.50. A far cry from the heady days of 1990 when the price hit an all-time high of $36. And things aren't getting any better, are they?

You may be fairly elderly as software companies go - founded in 1980 - but you don't get any points for longevity in this business. There's no respect for age, just good products and marketing nous.

And for a while you seemed to have both. Your flagship product, Harvard Graphics, was born in 1987, on the back of which the company grew to $100m turnover in the following year. But in 1990 someone had the bright idea of pinning a lot of the development effort on OS/2. Big mistake.

But worse was to come. Microsoft and Lotus started bundling their own presentation products, Powerpoint and Freelance, with their word processors and spreadsheets in a suite. Soon the bottom fell out of the market for standalone packages.

By 1993, the strain was beginning to show. Worldwide revenues dropped to $80m. By 1995 that was $40m and falling. For the fiscal year ending this September, you made a net loss of $16.5m.

To put it bluntly, the end is nigh. So accept the facts - you're never going to be the player you once were in the software market. Business people want complete solutions these days, not just products on their own.

Fellow sufferer Borland did the decent thing and sold out its flagship to Corel. Time for you to accept any crutches that come your way.